Free From Afar by John Russell Fearn

CHAPTER ONE
    It is a remarkable story that I have to tell, but since I have the permission of the law, and of my wife to do so, I think that I ought to set the whole astounding experience on record since it is still occupying the energies of the world’s greatest psychiatrists. Surely no married couple was ever so damned as Beryl and I from the start of our life together....
    We were married on a glorious June day. Our engagement had not been a long one. In fact I had reached the age of thirty-seven, and had come to consider myself as almost a confirmed bachelor when a visit to a Birmingham stockbroker’s firm brought me into contact with Beryl Wilson. At that time she was a very efficient secretary to a wealthy broker.
    My own business being in stocks and shares, I conceived all sorts of reasons for going to Birmingham, and finally—well, you know how such things are—Beryl Wilson became Mrs. Richard Shaw. I had become utterly entranced with this blonde-haired girl with the merry blue eyes. She was eight years my junior; filled with a terrible zest for living. I never knew a girl to love speed so much.
    Taking it all round our marriage was a pretty quiet affair. When we left the church we had already decided that our honeymoon would be spent at a quiet little hotel in Cornwall, to which I was going to drive us in my car. So, loaded up with luggage and with old shoes tied on the car’s rear bumper we started off on that brilliantly sunny morning.
    â€œEverything fixed?” Beryl asked me, when we were speeding down the country lanes.
    â€œEverything,” I acknowledged smiling. “I’ve arranged that we stop at the Ashdown Hotel for lunch, when we can also get rid of these fancy-dress clothes, then on again to Cornwall. We’ll be there by teatime.”
    â€œI suppose,” she mused, “we are indeed absolutely alone—just together in the world if I can put it that way. You have only a housekeeper and a handyman; I have—or had—only a landlady. No parents—”
    â€œAnd all the future before us,” I murmured. “I’m fairly well off for money, with a good business. We don’t need anybody to help us....”
    Beryl nodded dreamily; then, as she watched the road ahead she sat up suddenly. Bright-eyed, she turned to me.
    â€œLet me drive for a while, Dick, will you? You don’t go half fast enough for my liking. You know how I like to get along—especially in a lovely roadster like this. Go on! Please!”
    Well, it isn’t easy to refuse your bride when she puts it like that; so I stopped the car and we changed places. I watched her slender, capable hands grip the steering wheel. She let in the clutch and depressed the accelerator gently—at first. For about a couple of miles she drove as sedately as if following a hearse, presumably to get the feel of the car, then her merry blue eyes glanced at me.
    â€œFeel in the mood for a nice, swift run?” she asked me, impishly.
    â€œWithin limits,” I responded, a trifle uneasy as I remembered her weakness.
    My assent settled it for her. Gradually her foot pressed lower on the accelerator, and I watched the speed indicator creep up from forty to fifty, then gradually, to sixty. We were in an unrestricted area, of course, with a straight sunlit lane devoid of traffic ahead of us, but even so it seemed a pretty alarming rate to me.
    But Beryl was not nearly satisfied yet. She was enjoying every moment of this, the wind blowing the blonde hair back from her lovely face, her eyes fixed keenly straight ahead. Sixty—sixty-six—seventy—seventy-five—!
    â€œBerry!” I cried at last. “Berry, for heaven’s sake ease up a bit!”
    â€œWhy? We’re only just getting a real move on—!” And she added five miles an hour to the speed in mischievous retaliation. Then, suddenly, it happened! I could not be quite sure what occurred but I noticed